Looking for Next Big Thing? British Firm Hopes to Help

What’s the next big thing? TekCapital, a small, Oxford-based start-up, says it’s offering a short cut to find it.

Princeton University

Bloomberg

The company has developed a search engine to mine intellectual property from the world’s best universities and research institutes. It employs seven full-time staff and keeps a scientific board of 24 external, paid consultants to go through academic research for corporate clients and flag discoveries in their line of business.

It’s one of a parade of small tech companies planning to raise funds on the London Stock Exchange’s venture exchange. Clifford Gross, the company’s chief executive, said it’s looking to raise about £3 million($4.9 million) in a listing this month.

TekCapital is part of a small but vibrant sector of companies in Britain that tries to commercialize university discoveries: They have traditionally selected a technology from university research, built a company around it, financed it, and then listed it, or sold the company. The biggest players in the field include IP Group PLC, Imperial Innovations Group PLC and NetScientific PLC, which focuses on bio-medical and healthcare technologies.

TekCapital’s approach is different. It doesn’t aim to build a company around new research. Instead, it searches through the latest innovations and tries to pair that up with companies in the market for new technology. TekCapital narrows its gaze to what it says is a group of institutions responsible for 80% of the world’s published peer-reviewed scientific research–about 3,300 institutions.

Here’s how TekCapital says it can help companies: A smartphone maker, let’s say, is in the market for the latest data-encryption technology for a new line of devices. Where to start? A Google search for “data encryption technologies available for license” produced some 14 million hits. TekCapital’s refined search get 112. Those then get reviewed by the company’s scientific board before being presented to a client.

Founded in June 2012, TekCapital spent a year refining its search engine and putting together its technical and management teams. Mr. Gross declines to disclose clients.

“They lift up their kimono and tell us what they need,” he says. “The only thing they have in common is that they are desperately hungry for external innovation.”